Having taped out late last year, samples based on the new RV790 graphics processor have been doing rounds in the industry. A few more details have surfaced about it. Earlier noted to have identical clock speeds to that of the RV770XT (Radeon HD 4870), the RV790 samples are now known to have higher memory clock speeds. While the Radeon HD 4870 has its memory frequency at 900 MHz GDDR5 (effective 3.60 GHz), the samples carry memory clocked at 975 MHz (effective 3.90 GHz). Interestingly the memory chips on the sample, labeled IDGV1G-05A1F1C-40X, made by Qimonda, are specified to run at 1.00 GHz, reaching the 4 GHz effective memory speed mark. The samples feature 1 GB of memory. The RV790 is AMD's new current-generation graphics processor built on the newer 40nm silicon fabrication process. The new process is expected to reduce the GPU's power consumption and thermal footprint. The RV790 is conceived to be an immediate successor to the RV770 GPU.

It is possible it could clock faster and show more improvement over the 4870 with the die shrink. More shaders are fine, but Nvidia is getting the trick done in shader heavy games with unlocking the shader clock. AMD does something like that and they should have a true winner.

Thoase are great speed improvements, but I think ANMD should really start expanding the PCB's length to get to their overclocking potenital that NVIDIA has right now. I'm waiting for Shader 5.0 cards so I don't really care.

I just noticed that ATi would result to brute force like pumping up clockrates, squeezing more shaders, using smaller fab process and using faster mems. They should once again try to think out of the box and think of unorthodox hardware architecture to jumpstart architectural trend and claim the performance crown. Im thinking that there will come a time where we will reach the smallest fab limit and nVidia having more headroom for improvement and ATi having none.

I just noticed that ATi would result to brute force like pumping up clockrates, squeezing more shaders, using smaller fab process and using faster mems. They should once again try to think out of the box and think of unorthodox hardware architecture to jumpstart architectural trend and claim the performance crown. Im thinking that there will come a time where we will reach the smallest fab limit and nVidia having more headroom for improvement and ATi having none.

Click to expand...

Yeah that's been true since G80, but IMHO that time will "never" come. I remember the days when they said 32 nm would be the limit, later 22nm and some are saying now we could reach 11nm. We are still at 40nm and IMO by the day 32nm is of wide use the panorama will change again. And I'm just talking about "standard" silicon, that is, the same in use today, with the required changes. Many other things can come and change it more.

Anyway 40nm will probably be a deciding factor, because both will have their next high-end cards around the same time.